election. a detroit lawmaker demands for city be saved from the financial brink because it supported obama and last month election. also, bob costas offered a clarification of sorts on his controversial comments about america's gun culture and a murder suicide involving an nfl player. he is not backing down. we will look at where this argument goes coming out. one of the country's largest teachers unions is now coming under fire for using what one person called vicious and vile warfare to discuss the virtues of taxing the rich. we will play the video and debate what kind of message this ascending. >> the 1% said don't worry, this is good for you because it will trickle down from us to you. someday you will be rich and someday you will be rich and these rules will be your rules too. fancy water. i've gotine grams of protein. that's three times more than me! [ female announcer ] ensure clear. nine grams protein. zero fat. in blueberry/pomegranate and peach. is efficiently absorbed in small continuous amounts. citracal slow release continuously releases calcium plus d with efficient abs

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challenge the president's mandate in a letter to mr. obama. writing, "after a status quo election in which both you and the republican majority in the house were re-elected, the american people rightly expect both parties to come together on a fair middle ground. adding the president's approach is neither balanced nor realistic. >> this is unaccept to believe have repeat performance of what they watched in horror in the summer of 2011. >> white house officials note that even erskine bowles is pulling back from the claim by boehner he is on board. in a few moments the president will be hosting the congressional ball, black tie holiday party. first time they will see him face to face in days. maybe they'll work on a compromise. >> bret: ed henry on the north lawn. thanks. let's talk about the fiscal cliff negotiations with one of the key democrats involved. chris van hol season a five-term representative from maryland. the ranking member of the house budget committee. thank you for being here. >> great to be with you. >> bret: where do you see the process now? >> we have been waiting f

move a great deal. who was the first person after the election was the speaker who went down and provided the re-knew. >> they blasted the proposal to limit deductions to tell bloomberg television it's unrealistic. >> that means every hospital and university and non-for profit, the agency. across the country would find themselves on the verge of collapse. >> they had a different view when he proposed to limit not eliminate charitable deduction for wealthy to pay for healthcare reform. >> there is very little evidence that has impact on the charitable giving. >> he continues to make the case. they have anchors an pundit, a visit from the primetime line-up, including rachel maddow, ed shorts and adrianna huffington. they talk about the importance of preserving the middle class tax cut. >> bret: not every democrat on board with president obama proposal. emanuel has that story. >> democrats won't agree to it. obama wouldn't sign a bill. >> they blast the house republican plan it's not likely that president obama will get to sign his own fiscal cliff plan since the republicans and dem

in this debate with the greater leverage by virtue of his re-election and the fact he campaigned the issue at the core of these negotiations, raising rates on high income. this report i don't see as changing the dynamic much at all. it was one of these reports that both side could and did day care from it what they wanted to. even at 146,000, that's not at a level high enough to be bringing back into employment a lot of people that lost their jobs. gwen: there's a public dynamic, which we just say -- saw, the president and speaker. then we hope, we assume, they're a private dynamic going on. what do we know about that? >> if you talk to the speaker of the house and his statue they say there are negotiations going on between the speaker and the president. on thursday the staffs met and hashed some things out. i'm told they're going to continue talks through the weekend now, so there's something going on here behind the scenes. what we don't know but publicly they continue to fire off artillery barrageses. part of it is they can't admit they have a deal until they have one nailed down.

boehner made a point today to say there is not much time between election day and the end of the year. he thinks the white house has already wasted weeks because he does not think the proposal to avoid a fiscal cliff is serious one. negotiations here are nowhere. another republican, senator lindsey graham thinks he thinks things are heading down hill. >> i think we are going over the cliff. it's clear to me they made a political calculation. the offer doesn't deal with the entitlement reform to save the medicare and medicaid and social security from imminent bankruptcy. it raises $1.6 trillion on job creators to destroy the economy. no spending controls. >> reporter: treasuresy secretary tim geithner advocated for clinton era tax rates and wants top earns to pay 39.6%. he said when that was the rate in the '90s there was was good economic growth and strong private investment. said republicans would rather raise revenue closing the loophole and limiting deduction need the time to realize that might not bring in enough cash. >> that is a good set of propose is and good for the economy.

john boehner admits that basically the president won the election, and that, in fact, taxes have to go up, in terms of tax rates have to go up on the rich, the president is prepared to see the nation go off the fiscal cliff, shep. >> shepard: what's the thinking on whether they can actually come together at some point here, ed? >> right now it's pretty dim. if you look at what speaker john boehner said in that exclusive interview with our own chris wallace on "fox news sunday." he said right now there are nowhere in these talks. other serious republicans like lindsey graham says he thinks we are edging closer to closer to this just being in calamity. >> i think we are going over the cliff. it's pretty clear to me that they made a political calculation. >> he believes we are likely to go of 00 cliff now. the bottom line is tonight the president is hosting congressional leaders for this congressional ball. basically a black tie holiday party. maybe they will start talking about compromise but so far none in site. ed henry live on the north lawn. prince william's wife kate in the hospi

people and they lost that in the election and have not been able to make the case that they should have made in the election this year which is on spending and the debt limit. >> go ahead. >> this is bad for the g.o.p. no matter what. and i hate to say this. but, you know, we are either not going appeal to our very conservative base or we're going to tick off people that think that we're not being hard enough. so, this is going to end up. this is going to play badly for the g.o.p. either way. obama set this up. kind of like a dog and pony show to where it's almost like this is just aimed at the republican party. >> judge jeanine: doug, is this just about spending? is it about the taxes? is it about the debt ceiling? make no mistake. do we all agree that, you know, the elimination of congressional approval and the elimination of the debt ceiling, i mean, that would be pretty much fiscal death for all of us. >> i think it would be a mistake. i think it's about something larger which is leadership, a vision of who we are as a people. and can we have the kind of bipartisan cooperation we us

the election is over the republicans lost. he wants to have a role in one of his causes. immigration is a passion he shares with his brother jeb, former governor of florida who is thinking of his own political future and possibly a white house run and wants to help in the reset of the republican party which will include taking a serious look at actually finally engaging on immigration reform. jon: fair to say hispanics did not exactly flock to mitt romney this time around. george w. bush did pretty well with them both four years ago and eight years ago. >> reporter: very well, he got about 41% in his last election, that is a number republicans are going to have to meet in order to win the demographics of a presidential run and get a coalition that gets you the map to win the white house. 71-27, which it was this time is not going to get you the white house. you have to be upwards of 40%, possibly in future years higher than that. and george bush, with his compassionate conservatism, his texas heritage, the fact that he spent so much time there, speaking spanish, living in a place whe

by natanya who the head of genuine parliamentary election is trying to curry favor and. within the domestic market. iran claims have captured an american drone in its airspace the scan eagle aircraft was apparently conducting a reconnaissance flight when it was seized but the u.s. naval forces responded saying all of their planes are accounted for university of tehran professor side mohammad marandi says that washington is responsible for heightening tensions the united states is that we hate being in a very hostile manner towards iran the very fact that drones are cars and they going over iranian airspace the americans are carrying out. psychological warfare against iran and they shut down the iranian central bank and preventing iran from even importing medicine some people have died because of a shortage of medicine in iran because of the sanctions that the u.n. the united states have imposed on the country that hurt them more than anyone else because it shows how aggressive western countries are behaving this heightened tensions because this forces iran to behave more aggressive

hope on the fiscal cliff. the dow and s&p 500 gained post-election day tumble. the dow climbed 13 points for its fourth straight game. >>> more trouble for once untouchable apple. jeffries cut its price target by 100 bucks down to $480 a share. shares fell by more than half a percent on the news. >>> now on to our top story. tonight is taxes and how hard we are all about to get hit. there are already a trillion in tax increases baked right into the obamacare law and that means upper being in earners will see billions of dollars in tax hikes as it is. for democrats it is not enough. with republican lawmakers backing off the pledge not to raise taxes looks like tax hikes for the wealthy are certainty. joining for more, grover norquist, president of americans for tax reform. thanks so much for joining us. >> absolutely you say a lot of people are missing the fact that obamacare baked in a ton of tax hikes for wealthier americans as it is? >> people talk about the fiscal cliff as if it is one thing. it is three. there's the obamacare taxes. to pay for obamacare were delayed until afte

municipality is elected, he's kurdish. you think we got issues. i'm sorry, this is not republican and democrat politics, this is we don't like you, we're going to put you in jail. by the way, they did that a few months ago. they rounded up a bunch of local mayors and put them in jail. if people went to the local camps they had resources but they were also afraid. true or not, i don't know, i didn't validate the information but there were reports of assaults and abuse by the soldiers in these camps. i don't know if it's true or not, i can't comment on that, i'm just telling you what i heard from mue kurdish partners there. whether it's true or not is irrelevant because people won't go to the camps. in the meantime, the government says we won't support you if you're not in the camps. they won't do points of distribution, they don't even want you to have tents and that's why you see the rag tag asortment of red crescent tents and there's some shelter box tents that were out there and people just made their own shelters. so we had this huge thing where we have the local municipality who i

weeks since the election with nonsense. >> the president is asking for $1.6 trillion worth of new revenue over ten years, twice as much as he been asking for in public. stimulus spending that exceeded the amount of new cuts he was willing to consider. it was not a serious offer. >> reporter: and boehner says he was flabbergasted when he was given the proposal. >> heather: and democrats are defending themselves? >> treasury-secretary tim geithner on fox news defending the president's plan for raising revenues, cutting spending and reduce the deficit by $4 trillion over the next ten years. he said the ball is in the g.o.p.'s court. >> you have heard them for the first time i think in two decades they are willing to have revenues go up to make a balanced plan but they have to tell you what they want do on rates and revenues. >> he says there is no plan to an agreement unless they acknowledge tax rates have to go up for the wealthiest americans. >> heather: thank you very much. with less than one month to reach a deal there is new urgency to reach a deal. coming up our political panel

our elected efficients make our needs and it's in physical presence and i have had the great pleasure of serving under our mayor lee who i would like to make a invite to make a few remarks in honor or of arab heritage month here in san francisco. >> thank you, thank you joaquin, thank you, welcome to our orange city hall. i want to welcome everybody here this fourthth animal america arab month of separation and it's my pleasure to join us here and many of us know that we are such a lucky city, and we are lucky because people around their world make their way to fraction, find hopey until the city they know that we celebrate our diversity and find strength in the different cultures that pretend together and now, i ask you also to bring me talent from the arab america communities to make me and help me lune run the city. yes, it's incredible. union, i think i can talk about how wonderful diversity is, but we have to get the talent from our communities to represent all of the different thing that we do in the city. and you know, tonight, even though there is something called a b

of course they've got the president elected with allies and now some of his allies have abandoned him but they don't have the strength to organize and reach out to citizens the way the muslim brotherhood have so this looks like a recipe for a long. civil uprising against the government i am not sure that this is going to go immediately into what people think could be a civil war unless acts of violence are going to continue day after day and that's what the morsi was concerned about syrian rebels have declared the country's main international airport a military zone warning civilians and they approached their own risk the u.s. is concerned rebel breakthroughs could force the government into a chemical attack something the white house says would trigger foreign intervention washington reportedly believes president assad is preparing to use chemical weapons and his art is going to take our reports allegations could be all that takes us official said intelligence agencies have detected that ourselves government has been preparing its chemical weapons stockpiles for possible use the obama

hello, tom. it is exciting times in tripoli. with election and new congress coming together. as i read libya's recent history it is a bit like we are reliving the post world war ii years. how right he was. that was chris. always thinking, always sharp, always ready. public service is too often looked down upon by some in this country. often my colleagues in the foreign service la meant they don't make them the way they used to anymore. today we remember a man, chris stevens, whose life and service just proves how wrong my colleagues really are. chris shows us they still make them the way they used to, only an awful lot better, thank you. [applause] >> chris's family would like to invite everyone to a reception after the ceremony. it will be held over there. you are all welcome. let us pray. oh lord, support us all the day long until the shadows lengthen and the evening comes and the busy world is hushed and the fever of life is over and our work is done. then in your mercy grant us a safe lodging and a holy rest and peace at the last. may the author of all life bless us and keep u

should never have any congressional check and balance raising the debt ceiling. he got elected president, not king. he is not king. he is president. martha: are you saying that republicans are willing to go to 39.6% back to that rate but the place where they will hold the line is on the debt ceiling issue. >> rates go up no matter what we do. there needs to be revenue component of any big deal. i think capping deductions is better than raising rates. there will come a day in february and march where we have to raise the debt ceiling by trillions of dollars. we're 16 trillion in debt. is it responsible to keep borrowing money and never address why you're in debt to begin with. long-term debt is baby boomers retiring putting pressure on medicare, medicaid and social security. i hope my party will look out for the country and not just the party itself and push the president to do something it has never done before, lead in bipartisan way. martha: white house said they came up with a trillion dollars in cuts. >> that is joke. that is a joke. have you seen any market reaction to the

ever do my job as the mayor, nor i suggest any member of the board of supervisors, elected office who also have responsibility for caring about the quality of life for everyone, unless we had a caring leadership in our social safety net. so, thank you, everyone, for coming and being part of this season of giving and a season of caring and sharing with everyone. you know, this year our season of giving campaign i'm focused on highlighting organizations that really work on the ground with our domestic violence victims, our youth, our seniors, our veterans, and certainly our homeless. and that's almost everybody. [laughter] >> but we definitely have a very specific programs that we have created with their help because we believe that targeting our efforts with each and every one of these groups has helped us over the many, many years getting past the rhetoric of simply saying that we care and into real programs that change people's lives and get them into our system of help and support. this year we're also wanting to send a message with not only our social service provider but our whole

looked at the hostage crisis it was resolved when the ron reagan was elected. you read the biographies of the hostage-takers, they act like a cowboy. their release the hostages the moment he was sworn in. it's not that well-known, but the soviets were taken hostage at their embassy at the same time. the soviets threatened to bomb tehran. their hostages were let go. it's also important to note that the iran-iraq board came to an end when the u.s. mistakenly shot down an iranian civil airline. the iranians thought, well, the u.s. is going to get into this war no-holds-barred and the ayatollah made a speech. during the poisoned chalice. the cards were such that he had to simply take the best deal he could. that recommending they bond in iranian airline. on to say their is a lesson there. they backed down in the face of a credible threat of force. at the same time, if you were the iranians your thinking to yourself, well, what can i learn from the example of india and pakistan? they detonated a nuclear bombs. sanctions imposed on them for a while. a few years later there were l

represented for our community in terms of a step forward. we are now elected lgbt peep to office and harvey was such an incredible trail blazer, not? in just getting elected, but in being a great leader and always holding his head high for our community. and i know when i was first sworn into office, one of the things that i always kept in mind was something that i understand harvey to have said, * that when you go into city hall, you walk up the central staircase. you don't walk on one of the side staircases because for our community, it is so important for us to walk up that central staircase and for us to be in the middle of everything and for everyone to know that we are here. and all these years later, we've made a lot of strides in the lgbt community, but we still have so much work to do around hiv issues, around our youth, around discrimination, around transinclusion, and all the things that we know that harvey had he been here today would still be working on and leading on. and, so, we have to keep doing our work. and frankly, we can't take for granted that queer people a

elections in muslim countries following the arab spring. this was part of a daylong forum hosted by the tens of democracies. this is just over one hour. >> good morning everyone. thank you, bob, for that introduction and thank you all of you for coming out early this morning for what i think will be a lively debate. we are going to be asking the question if democracy is to triumph in the middle east, victories at the ballot box are unavoidable and essential. this is the motion we will be debating in the intelligence- squared format per requests from our panelists who have done this once already -- they have had a practice round. they have not had a chance of doing this, but i suspect, had probably had several scotches and talked about ways to defeat their foes. we know that this is a time of revolution in the middle east. it started with a fruit sell seller in tunisia and toppled a 230-year dictator that spread to egypt and the egyptian revolution was concern to the united states. egypt has long held incredible importance to u.s. policy in the middle east. the u.s. reaction to that revo

reelected angela merkel as the party leader. she will now stand in national elections at the end of next year. after being renamed cdu chairwoman, delegates stood and applauded for nearly eight minutes. >> 903 votes -- that is 97.94%. >> a landslide victory for angela merkel. the record results left the unusually unflappable leader of germany's conservatives struggling to find words. >> those who know me know that i am really overwhelmed and moved, and i would like to express my sincere thanks. >> merkel has been at the helm of the cd you since 2000, but her leadership has never received such a resounding endorsement. her popularity is at an all-time high, and her speech ahead of the vote struck a triumphant note. >> this coalition is the most successful government since germany's reunification. unemployment is at its lowest level since 1990, and employment levels are the highest they have ever been, creating work and security for millions of people and families. >> on the eurozone debt crisis, merkel called once again on brussels to impose strict budgetary discipline on eu member s

make a deal. i mean, that's what politicians do. the republicans lost the election. they know they're going to have to raise revenues. but i think the over-hyping of deficits, the deficit mania that seized this town, is kind of crazy. i mean, i love alan simpson and erskine bowles, but they're talking about inflation at a moment when people are paying us money to invest in our treasury bonds. you know, the summer before last, when we had the debt ceiling negotiations, and everybody was saying oh, our credit is about to go down the tubes. the price of u.s. treasury bonds were going up. so the fact is that we have a problem. i'm hoping that we'll deal with it, especially, you know, the old age entitlementes, because sooner or later, you and i are going to be old enough to qualify for medicare, and we're going to at the present time to be a good system. but we i think a little rationality is called for. >> schieffer: you're saying it's not as bad as it seems. the fact of the matter swhen the bush tax cuts run out at the end of the year, when payroll tax-- whatever they call it, runs out

you can see the u.s. capitol building. in that building 535 elected representatives from every corner of america come together to debate the issues of the day. they are men and women from every religious, ethnic and family background. i look forward to watching libya develop equally strong institutions of government. education and healthcare are just two of the many areas where i see opportunities for close partnership between the united states and libya. i look forward to exploring those as we work together to build a free democratic prosperous libya. see you soon. >>> good afternoon, everyone. i'm an san francisco mayor ed lee. i want to welcome you from the bay area, from all over the country to san francisco's city hall. today we honor and celebrate ambassador john christopher stevens in this civic celebration of his life. i thank the stevens family for hosting this celebration here. amongst his many friends, his family, his colleagues from around the world who continue to reremember and celebrate his distinguished life and sacrifice he made for all of us. while we have lost a tru

electively oppressed haven't they and that's what brings them together in their identity. well that that may be the case when you look at from outside but i'm not sure to what extent kurdish people rally around that concept all together so and i think i think they tend to think within their nation state their future within that particular nation state you know in syria in iraq in turkey rather than building a larger union or so there are people take for example a great influence of syria collapses where if side goes to syria collapses what's the fate of the kurds there what do you think. while. now the. kurds are kind of like on the sidelines in the syrian conflict and you know basically they are divided into two one is you know the kurdish national council so they they basically stay watch and see and there are there are allegations that the p y d which is a p.k. carefully it is more in tandem with the assad regime so that's a tension in itself and and given the fact that the second group was not invited to the newly built established syrian national coalition ok that that would prove tensi

actually they want to see new elections maybe one new orleans and new constituent assembly and a new constitution so what are you going to do you're going to try to kick them out of power if you try to change good match after numerous a civil war risk we're seeing the islamists into the streets is an obvious population who makes up. i don't know or. so where it's a very very dangerous situation it's my own situation. where rebel groups from across syria are uniting under one military command and the latest western backed effort to topple president bashar al assad fares are also being voiced in the west that the regime may use its chemical weapons arsenal to root out opposition fighters something the government denies what is going to check out investigates home close is a foreign intervention. u.s. officials said intelligence agencies have detected that assad's government has been preparing its chemical weapons stockpiles for possible use the obama administration's message to syria the u.s. is ready to act if you make the tragic mistake of using these weapons there will be consequenc

political kurdish activists including elected to m.p.'s elected mailers councillors journalist and so on who are in prison who have not been well not been sentenced by the turkish courts yet only recently they were given the basic right to make a statement or a defense in their mother time so there's a lot of problems still existing in turkey and kurds are not only students of turkey but there are also millions of kurds who are students of iran who are students of iraq and who are students of syria so it's a very complex matter if turkey of the current government of turkey is keen to see it is a good as question they need to start thinking regionally rather than only about kurds within turkey you know they always come up with do with the issue of p.k. k. being a fighting force in turkey in iraq or encounter the mountains between iraq and iran and then also the us use that as an excuse to continue in their mistreatment of kurdish political activists and so on and within turkish territory but that these are problem and he says bring apartment started on is done a lot for kurds which is

apartmently elections next june, typically during periods of time when there is that democratic process. there's even greater and international scrutiny on iran's human rights record. trying to prevent the iranian nuclear program from arriving at the point where they're actually able to produce a weapon, and how you tie an antiproliferation policy with a human rights policy is an issue that is often been difficult for policymakers to reconcile. so, why don't i quickly just open it up. maybe i'll start with marina, since your experience at this is so personal, and maybe ask you just on a very basic level whether you think life for ordinary iranians has gotten better or worse? the last few years, and just give us a kind of -- your best sense of what the human rights landscape looks like today versus, say, five years ago or a decade ago. >> well, i guess this all depends on how much people know here about how bad, the absolute disregard for human rights iran is in general. i don't know how much you know actually about it. in 1979, when the revolution succeeded, we hoped that iran would act

focused on the egyptian elections. >> good morning everyone. thank you, bob, for that introduction and thank you all of you for coming out early this morning for what i think will be a lively debate. we are going to be asking the question if democracy is to triumph in the middle east, victories at the ballot box are inavoidable and essential. this is the motion we will be debating in the intelligence-squared format per requests from our panelists who have done this once already -- they have had a practice round. they have not had a chance of doing this, but i suspect, had probably had several scotches and talked about ways to defeat their foes. we know that this is a time of revolution in the middle east. it started with a fruit sell seller in tunisia and toppled a 230-year dictator that spread to egypt and the egyptian revolution was concern to the united states. egypt has long held incredible importance to u.s. policy in the middle east. the u.s. reaction to that revolution was unclear. there were some that said this was a good thing that this would only lead to democracy. there were

striking things is the political transitions taking place in terms going from a non-elected representation and articulation of goals to an elected -- elected -- a transitional government and then an elected government, both on the national and the local level, and that's -- you don't see that elsewhere, at least not in that striking as a fashion. in the rest of the book, i talk about the personality of gadhafi, what motivated him, and people argue that the personalities of the dictators themselves don't matter. in the case of libya, that's not quite true. gadhafi was a mercurial, i believe a quite intelligent person who had certain fixations and -- i'll try to be diplomatic here because -- [laughter] there's a lot of strangeness there that motivated his behavior in ways which i think were so bizarre that many of the people who are looking at this from the u.s. policy side -- felt, in a way, they were accustomed to the way of thinking about things, and that posed problems when you try to anticipate what he was going to do or respond to him. for example, you know, after the 19

century let's just look at a couple of elections that just took place everybody followed the us elections it was a very tight race between president obama and mitt romney in france we had a new president elected and people followed that in russia there was an election but not much choice and in china there wasn't even the pretended they didn't pretend to elect a new leader they just put someone there and people don't want that people want democracy people want to say people want to play a role in their societies china does not offer that to them in the political sphere and therefore i believe for a long time coming there's not going to be a chinese century while alexander what about the middle class what it would pepe said. the middle class because that's the power of the west traditionally. yes i mean the middle class is very strong in the west pretty is the right there are problems we have a declining middle class that is something we have to fight but for the time being we are both the most competitive societies and the most equitable societies if you look at the distribution

here is that they want to start the process all over again with zero. one new election. new parliament and we knew there was a new constitution so what are you going to do you're going to try to kick them out of power if you try to change the match for. this a civil war we're going to islamize into the students as long as. i don't or. so we're it's a very very dangerous situation it's my own situation now as concerns rising in the west that the syrian regime may use its huge arsenal of chemical weapons another troubling video appeared earlier this week on the web it shows what appears to be a rebel group testing chemical weapons on two lab rabbits placed in containers after an unknown gas is released and the death of both animals a mass person threatens to use it against syrian civilians this comes as rebel groups from across the area are uniting under one command and the latest western backed efforts to topple president bashar ideas that have to count looks into whether all the chemical fears of the west are really a prelude to foreign intervention. u.s. officials said intelligence ag